Transfigurations

Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!

Friday, May 30, 2014

Anglican Unscripted Episode 100

May 30, 2014

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Every Week Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please donate at http://anglican.tv/donate00:00 AU 10016:55 Social Terrorism and the Boko Harum26:05 CA, TX, & SC legal updates with AS Haley34:33 Greg Griffth and Standing Firm42:05 XY Bishop updates with Peter Ould51:01 Idiots56:55 Closing

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Your Faith is Now Intrinsically Offensive. Are You Ready for the Fallout?
...In 1907, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, reading the signs most people didn’t noticed, published his dystopian End Times novel, Lord of the World. Set in the early twenty-first century, Benson foresaw a time when busy workers “had learned at least the primary lessons of the gospel that there was no God but man, no priest but the politician, no prophet but the schoolmaster.” He envisioned a world in which Christianity had all but vanished with little hope of resurgence, a world where the marginalization of Christians morphed into persecution and finally genocide.

In the novel, an elderly statesman explains the situation to an young priest: “First, you see, there was Materialism, pure and simple that failed more or less—it was too crude—until psychology came to the rescue. Now psychology claims all the rest of the ground; and the supernatural sense seems accounted for. That’s the claim. No, father, we are losing; and we shall go on losing, and I think we must ever be ready for a catastrophe at any moment.”...

Cary Bogue, CEO of Project Wildfire and owner of the “Catholics & Protestants United Against Christian Discrimination” Facebook page, objects to a page called “Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted,” (WARNING: obscene content) which depicts as its cover image the unborn Jesus as an abortion victim wearing a crown of thorns, while the Virgin Mary smokes a marijuana cigar with a satisfied smirk. The page’s profile image is similarly offensive, featuring a cartoon image of the Virgin looking down at her swollen belly and muttering an expletive.

The page’s description reads, “People have rights, ideas do not. No beliefs are above criticism. Organized religion is AIDS and we desperately need a cure.”...

Seven weeks since Boko Haram militants abducted more than 200 girls taking exams in a secondary school in the remote northeastern village of Chibok and little is known of their whereabouts or what exactly the military is doing to get them out...

Albert Mohler: Ten Books for Eager Reading — The 2014 Summer Reading List G.K. Chesterton once wisely remarked that “there is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.” It may be true that readers can be divided into these two categories — those who are eager to read a book and those who just want a book to read. These two types of readers experience a book and the art of reading very differently. My summer reading list is for the first sort of reader. These are books that are both interesting and intelligent. They belong in an intelligent reader’s list of reading for the summer season.

This list reflects the kind of reading choices I make for a season like summer, when I can devote some time to reading that is not dedicated to some larger writing or research project. There is also an unapologetic tilt toward a reading list for men in this list. These are books that are likely to keep a man reading, and with Father’s Day close at hand, perhaps some readers will decide to honor dad with a book or two.

One last note: Several of these books are thoughtful accounts of battle, military history, and modern espionage. They will be profitably read through the lens of an intelligent Christian worldview, though the books themselves are often not written from such a worldview. The world needs more careful Christian readers, who can read honestly, reflectively, thoughtfully, eagerly, and well...

Memorial Day 2014: Heavenly Father, as our nation pauses today...

Heavenly Father, as our nation pauses today to remember those in the military who have given their lives for freedoms we enjoy, we pray you would have us all look to you for strength, comfort and guidance. Be with all who serve in our Armed Forces. Bless them and their families. Grant your loving protection. Let peace prevail among all the nations, O God. Especially let your mercy rest upon our land, even as we acknowledge with thanksgiving your past goodness on this country. If it is your will, preserve the lives of the men and women in uniform as they defend our citizenry. Most of all, we pray that you would turn the hearts of all – military and civilian – to your holy Word where we find the true peace for our sinful souls that surpasses all understanding. Keep us repentant of sin. Move us to know, take hold and treasure your saving grace. In the name of Jesus, our Savior and Your beloved Son, who alone gives this peace and hope for eternity, we pray. Amen. Found hereimage

The Unmerciful Servant-Kid Bible Story

VA Scandal: This Is What Death Panels Look Like
...With a little under six months before the crucial midterm elections, it is a helpful reminder to voters of the horrors that are not glitches, but essential features, of government-provided health care. The problems at the VA are omens, sneak previews of what the delivery of all health care in America will look like under Obamacare, and so it is fortuitous that the scandal should surface now.

President Obama is predictably, perfunctorily, outraged about these bad things that have been happening in the government he controls. He is shocked and promises to get to the bottom of the issue and do better in the future. It is tedious stuff.

The happenings at the VA are also more evidence, Obama critics say, that the president despises the military. Obama has been moving to reduce soldier pay and benefits and hollow out the military to mid-century staff levels. He has also been going on a human resources rampage, firing flag officers at a rate that alarms military observers. And like any good leftist, Obama believes that the only good American soldier is one who is functioning as a social worker, not a war-fighter...

Doctors and medical personnel are at their beck and call. Got a cold, a fever, a toothache, a tumor, chest or back pain, mental health issues, PTSD? No problem, come right on in. Military doctors are waiting to see you.

The attackers destroyed most of the village of Chukku Nguddoa and wounded another 10 people on Wednesday, said the police source in Borno state, the heart the revolt that is piling political pressure on the government.

Boko Haram, which grabbed world headlines last month by kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls further north in Borno, has stepped up its five-year-old campaign to carve an Islamic state out of the religiously mixed oil producer...

Boko Haram Added to U.N. Security Council's Terrorism List The U.N. Security Council added Boko Haram, the Nigerian extremist group holding more than 200 schoolgirls hostage, to its terrorism list on Thursday, meaning its leaders will have their foreign assets frozen, they will be banned from international travel and the group will be subject to an arms embargo.

"Today, the Security Council took an important step in support of the government of Nigeria's efforts to defeat Boko Haram and hold its murderous leadership accountable for atrocities," said U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power in a statement.

"By adding Boko Haram to the UN's…sanctions list, the Security Council has helped to close off important avenues of funding, travel and weapons to Boko Haram, and shown global unity against their savage actions," she said...

A.S. Haley: Questions for a Judge Who Ruled in ECUSA’s Favor

May 22, 2014

Previously, I wrote about the tentative decision issued by Judge Donald Black of Fresno Superior Court in the case involving the withdrawal of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. His decision awards all of the diocesan monies, property and other assets to the remnant Episcopal Diocese on the theory that the Court of Appeals had already tied his hands, and left him with nothing to decide.

Nevertheless, he went on to adopt ECUSA’s theory of the case: that dioceses may not leave the Church, and that all property—even of a diocese (notwithstanding the limited language of the Dennis Canon)—is held in trust for the Church.

Once a judge issues a proposed tentative decision, California law allows any party to request a formal Statement of Decision which addresses matters not covered by the tentative decision. In this way, the parties help to ensure that the judge covers all the bases, and that there is a full articulation of the issues which is readily reviewable on appeal.

Yesterday, the attorneys for the Anglican parties submitted their Request for a Statement of Decision to Judge Black. The Request poses twelve questions to him which the Anglican parties contend he did not address adequately in his tentative decision. The questions in and of themselves probe the very underpinnings of his decision, and ask him to give his reasons for deciding as he did. the rest

Facebook To Offer 'Privacy Checkup' To Its Billion Users

Choose Your Victims Well: Why Boko Haram Now Gets Attention

by Mark Movsesian
5/21/14

Excerpt:
As everybody now knows, Boko Haram is an Islamist terrorist group, linked with al Qaeda, which seeks to establish an Islamist state in Nigeria. About a month ago, the group kidnapped hundreds of girls from a public school in the city of Chibok. The girls’ whereabouts remain unknown. Boko Haram’s leader has threatened to sell them into slavery.

The kidnapping has become a cause célèbre—as Terry Mattingly writes, an Official News Story. Major papers and cable news outlets have given it extended coverage. A worldwide hashtag campaign, #BringBackOurGirls, features the likes of Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Angelina Jolie. John McCain thinks the US should send in special forces to rescue the girls, whether or not Nigeria approves. Well, he wants to intervene everywhere. But otherwise sensible commentators, like Peggy Noonan, agree with him.

What Boko Haram has done to the schoolgirls is an atrocity. It’s appropriate to condemn the kidnapping and do what we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, and, most of all, get the girls home. But here’s the thing. Boko Haram has been carrying out atrocities for years. The group has murdered thousands and caused thousands more to flee. It has burned churches with people inside them; it has massacred people in the streets. But until now, the Western media has paid little attention. Why the change? the restimage

It’s sadly very difficult to get the Western media and human-rights activists to focus on the worldwide persecution of Christians. Kidnap schoolgirls, though, and people sit up and pay attention. The War on Women interests us; the War on Christians, not so much.

Anne Kennedy: The Courts of The Lord

May 22, 2014

Ever notice how no matter how hard you work you can never get to every task that lies before you or really make things nice? While you are planting a nice garden, the inside of the house is being systematically dismantled. While you are doing laundry the kitchen becomes a sugar encrusted sea of refuse and despair. While you are cleaning the school room, someone is eating a crumbly bun quietly in the car. Of course you do, but you probably aren't struggling through Ecclesiastes and the last tiny little bit of school and the sudden panic that it is nearly June and there is a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be done and look nice–like painting the the parish hall, and coping with that awful cleaning closet with all the vile chemicals, off of which the door fell–all at the same time. Or you are a nice holy person who doesn't descend into rage at the first sign of dirt. You are that clever mature person who can “let it go” and “focus on the people”....imageThe rest-don't miss this!

I am profoundly discouraged that someone like Solomon, who never did a day of house work in his life or had to interact with his thousands of children, and who probably walked in a stately way around the walls of Jerusalem, the courts of the temple, watching everyone labor industriously away, and who, in fact, did see its completion, he is the one who most perfectly articulates this never ending spinning and doing the same thing over and over again and never getting anywhere.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

New York Abortion Bill Allows Shooting Babies Through the Heart With Poison to Kill Them

by Steven Ertelt
5/20/14

It’s back! The so-called Women’s Equality Act, which allows late-term abortions in New York for virtually any reason, has returned.

A group of pro-abortion Democratic State Senators continued to push today for abortion-expansion, despite polls showing the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers oppose their dangerous agenda. And the bill has grisly consequences.

“How many times do New Yorkers have to reject this radical agenda that would legalize abortion for any reason through all nine months?” asked Lori Kehoe, New York State Right to Life executive director. “New York is already the abortion capital of the United States, with practically no oversight of the industry, but they would rather protect the abortion business than New York women. It’s wrong.” the restimage

Throughout the second trimester, late abortions can be completed by dismembering the developed unborn child, even when they can feel pain, pulling the baby out piece by piece until the mother’s uterus is empty. After the abortion, the abortionist must reassemble the child’s body to ensure nothing has been left inside the child’s mother.In abortions that take place later in pregnancy, which would be legalized in New York by the abortion-expanding Women’s Equality Act, often babies are killed by sliding a needle filled with a chemical agent, such as digoxin, into the beating heart, before being delivered.

Ibrahim’s husband, U.S. citizen Daniel Wani, a Christian, tells CNN that she has been spending her days bound with shackles on her legs. He was able to visit his wife for the first time in prison yesterday...

White evangelicals are twice as likely to admit they rarely go to church if asked online (17 percent) vs. over the phone by a live human being (9 percent). Black Protestants display a similar split (24 percent online vs. 14 percent by phone)...

Gallup: Only 3% Call Environment 'Most Important Problem'
A new Gallup poll released on Monday shows that Americans consider unemployment/jobs, government corruption, and the economy as the three "most important" problems facing the country. Just 3% of those surveyed listed the environment/pollution as America's most important problem...

The Old Testament in 10 Minutes + the New Testament in 10 Minutes

Monday, May 19, 2014

Film Festival Audience Approves Christian Movie 'The Overnighters'

Emily Belz
Monday, May 12, 2014

The credits rolled at a screening and an audience at a Chelsea theater in New York City erupted in extended applause for a middle-aged, theologically conservative Lutheran as he walked to the front, his son in tow. Jay Reinke is the central character in an award-winning documentary The Overnighters that had its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film shows Reinke serving as the pastor of a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in one of North Dakota’s fracking boom towns that have been inundated with male laborers. The population has expanded so quickly that housing is expensive or impossible to find; RV camps pop up everywhere, and workers sleep in their cars.

Williston, the North Dakota town at the center of the film, bans RVs and tries to prevent the men, some former convicts and drug addicts, from parking anywhere overnight. Despite the town’s hostility, Reinke’s church decided to open its doors and let men looking for work sleep in the church and its parking lot. Over two years, until the city shut down the church’s program, the church hosted, prayed with, and preached to 1,000 overnighters. They work on resumés together and share job contacts and discuss family problems. It’s a fantastically complex film that treats its Christian subjects fairly and compassionately.

The Tribeca Film Festival, though only 12 years old, is growing into one of the major festivals along with Sundance, Toronto, and South By Southwest. The festival circuit has grown more and more influential as independent films draw wider audiences and more dollars. The Overnighters wasn’t the only film at Tribeca with a religious main character, a small indication of a shifting attitude among the film elite. The Overnighters won an award at Sundance and already has a distributor, Drafthouse Films, which is scheduling a theatrical release in November. the rest/image

UN Calls Catholic Pro-Life Stance Torture

Andrew Branch
Monday, May 19, 2014

In a novel attack on pro-life groups and nations, the United Nations has accused the Roman Catholic Church of torture for advocating against abortion.

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), said Western powers for years have tried to use the UN to force a liberal social agenda on conservative nations. The Vatican has signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention Against Torture. During reports to those committees in the last 90 days, the UN tried to further press the Vatican to change its teaching.

“Committees have started trying to rewrite treaties and add new language, which they don’t have a right to do, and try to foist these new obligations on the governments that have already ratified the treaties,” Ruse said.

The children’s rights committee in February told the Vatican to change its teaching on abortion and homosexuality, including the practice of excommunicating abortionists. On May 5, the torture committee accused the Vatican of torture in both its pro-life views and its handling of child sexual abuse by priests. The committee’s theory is that by advocating against abortion, especially for women who are younger or victims of crimes, the Church is committing a form of psychological torture. the restimage

“This is a violation of freedom of religion,” Ruse said. And Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told the UN as much. Abortion itself is a form of torture, he said, accusing the United Kingdom and Canada directly for their practice of late-term abortion.

Frozen's Let It Go — A Mom Parody

Efforts Mount to Gloss Over Islamist Ideology of Boko Haram

U.S. Islamists are working hard to cleanse the semantics of the media so the Islamist ideology of Boko Haram isn't a topic of scrutiny.

By Ryan Mauro

May 15, 2014

The reason that Boko Haram believes its kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian girls is justified is because of Islamist teachings that the taking of female slaves is justified during jihad. And this jihad is not limited Nigeria. In a recent video, its leader said it is at war with Christianity and democracy.

There are efforts to gloss over the fact that Boko Haram is inspired by Islamist doctrine. Comedian Dean Obeidallah writes that Boko Haram is not “Islamic” and the media shouldn’t describe it as “Islamist,” “Islamic terrorists” or anything of the sort.

Ahmed Bedier, former executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and current leader of United Voices for America, speaking at a press conference organized by Muslim advocacy groups to distance Islam from Boko Haram, said he was “tired of people coming on television asking, ‘Where does this ideology come from?’ ” His answer was that it “comes from nowhere.”

Yet, the leader of the same press conference, Johari Abdul-Malik, the spokesman for the Dar Al Hijra mosque in Falls Church Va., said in reference to formally excommunicating Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau, “There is a great reluctance to excommunicate someone by extension. … It would be like convicting someone in absentia.” the rest

For months, hundreds of penniless villagers have been arriving in Nigeria’s capital with little more than their clothes and a few chickens. They leave behind a scorched land of destroyed churches and looted homes, now controlled by the Islamist extremists of Boko Haram.

The kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram last month has shocked the world, but many Nigerian villagers have been enduring deadly attacks for a year or longer. Thousands have fled across the borders to Cameroon or Chad, or southward to the capital, Abuja...

Anglican Unscripted Episode 99

May 17, 2014

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Every Week Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please donate at http://anglican.tv/donate

Story Index00:00 Twitter Diplomacy11:37 No More Religion Reporters18:57 Jersey Shore Gate36:37 The Greatest Lawsuit in History43:00 The Evilest Bishop of All Time (so far)49:16 Closing and Behind the Scenes

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Albert Mohler: Why So Many Churches Hear So Little of the Bible

May 14, 2014

It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God.

The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled, “Yawning at the Word.” In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of the Bible. We may wince when we read him relate his recent experiences, but we also recognize the ring of truth.

Galli was told to cut down on the biblical references in his sermon. “You’ll lose people,” the staff member warned. In a Bible study session on creation, the teacher was requested to come back the next Sunday prepared to take questions at the expense of reading the relevant scriptural texts on the doctrine. Cutting down on the number of Bible verses “would save time and, it was strongly implied, would better hold people’s interest.”

As Galli reflected, “Anyone who’s been in the preaching and teaching business knows these are not isolated examples but represent the larger reality.”... the rest

In many churches, there is almost no public reading of the Word of God. Worship is filled with music, but congregations seem disinterested in listening to the reading of the Bible. We are called to sing in worship, but the congregation cannot live only on the portions of Scripture that are woven into songs and hymns. Christians need the ministry of the Word as the Bible is read before the congregation such that God’s people—young and old, rich and poor, married and unmarried, sick and well—hear it together. The sermon is to consist of the exposition of the Word of God, powerfully and faithfully read, explained, and applied. It is not enough that the sermon take a biblical text as its starting point.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

God cares not for the length of our prayers...

God cares not for the length of our prayers, or the number of our prayers, or the beauty of our prayers, or the place of our prayers; but it is the faith in them that tells—believing that prayer soars higher than the lark ever sang, plunges deeper than diving-bell ever sank, darts quicker than lightning ever flashed. Though we have used only the back of this weapon instead of the edge, what marvels have been wrought! If saved, we are all the captives of some earnest prayer. ...Thomas DeWitt Talmage image

The measure angered columnist Susie O'Brien of the Herald-Sun, located in Victoria's capital city of Melbourne.

“There is absolutely no need for 'pain relief for fetuses' and resuscitation attempts for fetuses which survive and there is no need for special provisions which protect against gender selection or partial births,” O'Brien wrote...

Coming next under Obamacare is the abortion mandate
...During oral arguments in March, when trying to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to let it force Hobby Lobby to comply with its contraceptive mandate, the Obama administration made a striking admission.

Hobby Lobby and its lawyers from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty had argued that the government’s position, if accepted, would allow the government to force people to pay for abortions.

The government did not deny the charge. In fact, it admitted that its legal arguments would justify an abortion mandate.

Responding to a question posed by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Obama administration's lawyer answered “you're right” that “under our theory” the government could force payment for all abortions...

Bobby Jindal, raised Hindu, talks about his Christian conversion
A dozen politically active pastors came here for a private dinner Friday night to hear a conversion story unique in the context of presidential politics: how Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal traveled from Hinduism to Protestant Christianity and, ultimately, became what he calls an “evangelical Catholic.”

Over two hours, Jindal, 42, recalled talking with a girl in high school who wanted to “save my soul,” reading the Bible in a closet so his parents would not see him and feeling a stir while watching a movie during his senior year that depicted Jesus on the cross...

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, focused on 551 married adults and was entitled "More than a dalliance? Pornography consumption and extramarital sex attitudes among married US adults"...duh

"Yahoo is throwing women to the wolves on this issue," Nita Chaudhary said in a statement, co-founder of UltraViolet. "Desperate women seeking help are being directed by Yahoo to predatory centers where they will face harassment, aggression, and outright lies about their health and safety, and that is unacceptable. Yahoo should remove these ads immediately."...

Ohio measles outbreak largest in USA since 1996
...The Ohio outbreak is part of a larger worrisome picture: As of Friday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had logged 187 cases nationwide in 2014, closing in on last year's total of 189. CDC warned several weeks ago that the country could end up having the worst year for measles since home-grown outbreaks were eradicated in 2000...

The Rise of Anti-Christianity in the West

By Wallace Henley
May 12, 2014

Excerpt:
I witnessed the launch of the age of marginalization [of Christianity] as a reporter for a large daily newspaper in the 1960s. The anti-establishmentarians who became the present establishment pontificated widely on the unimportance of biblical Christianity. From that beginning, marginalization went on to become public policy as the church was sequestered behind a bigger and bigger "wall of separation" that fenced out the wrong culprit: a regime that might want to create its own religious establishment, or one whose godless policies would cause it to throttle the church.

Vilification easily follows from marginalization. To vilify is to defame and slander. The goal is to shrink respect for the person, movement, institution, or idea being vilified.

Marginalization says the person, movement, institution, or idea deserves only a minimal and peripheral role in culture. But vilification suggests there really should be no role at all for the vilified subject. It has nothing to contribute to the great societal conversation, not even from the cultural boondocks.

Now the danger mounts and the possibility of persecution looms. What has been merely caricatured, marginalized, and vilified is now villainized. That pesky person, movement, institution, or idea is no longer to be scorned merely, but feared. It's the bad boy on the cultural street, ready to trip or assault the noble civilization-builders and freedom-defenders who gallantly march by.

The consensus-makers in the contemporary Establishments of Entertainment, Information, Academia, and Governance raise national awareness regarding these villains. At this point, there's not enough evidence to send an armed team to get the villains off the street. But the cultural SWAT team is standing by... the restimage

Monday, May 12, 2014

Dear Lord, if at this evening hour...

Dear Lord, if at this evening hour I think only of myself and my own condition and my own day’s record of service, then I can find no peace before I go to sleep, but only bitterness of spirit and miserable despair. Therefore, O Father, let me think rather of Thee and rejoice that Thy love is great enough to blot out all my sins. And, O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, let me think of Thee, and lean upon Thy heavenly righteousness, taking no pleasure in what I am before Thee but only in what Thou art for me and in my stead. And, O Holy Spirit, do Thou think within me, and so move within my mind and will that as the days go by I may be more and more conformed to the righteousness of Jesus Christ my Lord; to Whom be glory forever. Amen. ...John Baillie image

41 American Anglican Bishops Stand in Solidarity with Persecuted Believers

by Faith McDonnell
May 9, 2014

Forty American Anglican (U.S.) bishops, as well as the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, (ACNA) have signed on to a Pledge of Solidarity & Call to Action on behalf of Christians and Other Small Religious Communities in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.

Some of the Nigerian girls who managed to escape after armed men from the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped them last month shared their stories, while the governor of the state where the incident took place says more than 200 girls still captive have been "sighted."

On the night of April 14-15, the gunmen commanded the hundreds of students at the Government Girls Secondary School in the town of Chibok in eastern Borno State to gather outside, and then they went into a storeroom and took all the food.

"They then moved all of us to the main gate and brought their cars where they loaded the food they had taken and asked us to get in," one of the girls was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera. "The girls that had no shoes on and were not wearing veils were told to go and fetch them as they started to set the school on fire."

“I Feel Super Great About Having an Abortion”—The Culture of Death Goes Viral

Albert Mohler
May 8, 2014

Emily Letts is a 25-year-old abortion counselor at the Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey whose video has gone viral. These days, videos go viral on a daily basis, and most are soon forgotten. But not this one. Emily Letts decided to make a video about her own abortion, and the result is one of the most disturbing video messages ever presented to public view.

“I feel super good about having an abortion,” Letts told Philadelphia Magazine. “Women and men have been thirsting for something like this. You don’t have to feel guilty.”

Her video follows her through her first-trimester abortion, undertaken at the clinic where she counsels other women. About a year after she began working at the women’s center, she found herself pregnant. As she told her story in Cosmopolitan, “Once I caught my breath, I knew immediately I was going to have an abortion. I knew I wasn’t ready to take care of a child.”

She was, however, ready to produce a video about her own abortion. “I searched the Internet, and I couldn’t find a video of an actual surgical procedure in the clinic that focused on the woman’s experience,” she wrote. “We talk about abortion so much and yet no one really knows what it actually looks like. A first trimester abortion takes three to five minutes.”... the rest

Her most chilling words of all are those with which she ends her video:“It is about a month and a half after the procedure. I feel like I talk to women all the time and of course everyone feels bad about this; everyone’s going to feel guilty. It’s a given how people should feel about this, that what they’re doing is wrong. I don’t feel like a bad person. I don’t feel sad. I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby. I can make a life. I knew that what I was going to do was right, ’cause it was right for me and no one else. I just want to share my story.”

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Anglican Unscripted Episode 98

May 10, 2014

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Every Week Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please donate at http://anglican.tv/donate

Story Index00:00 Peace over Repentance14:29 Symptoms Vs. Disease22:36 Submit or Die28:30 Legal News with AS Haley37:08 Peter Ould on the Anglican Communion46:35 Closing and Bloopers

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Eric Metaxas interviews the "Vicar of Baghdad," Canon Andrew White

May 5, 2014 This delightful 45 minute full-length interview at the 2014 Wilberforce Award Ceremony will have you laughing one minute and crying the next. Eric Metaxas prods Canon White with humor and curiosity in his inimitable "Socrates in the City" style - and the vicar gives as good as he gets. Covering everything from the unbelievable experience of ministering to the only Anglican church in the violent Red Zone in Iraq to the high plains of joy found in following Christ's footsteps his entire life, this is an interview you will not forget. Canon White also chronicles his own remarkable experience with MS, and the medical clinics he has founded in that city, all the while light-heartedly trying to convince Eric to get dental treatment there.

Do Evangelicals Have Room for Prophets?

Andrew White is a favorite speaker at Wheaton College, and he was with us again last week. He is an Anglican priest whose parish is in downtown Baghdad. Yes, Iraq. He's affectionately called the "Vicar of Baghdad," and it's a rough job: In the past ten years, some 1,200 of his church members have been killed. When he travels on pastoral visits, he is accompanied by a couple truckloads of armed guards. Just in case.

I've heard Canon White address our students now three times. And in every case he ends the talk with his pastoral mantra. The students know it so well, they finish it before he can.

White tells how many times people caution him while he's in Iraq. They say "Take care." It annoys him; taking care is the last thing he wants to do. So he thunders to all 2,600 of our students, "Don't take care . . ." and they chime in: "Take risks." He currently has a Wheaton graduate as his personal assistant. One of my students, Sally, may join him this summer as an intern. Imagine telling your parents that your 2014–15 summer internship will be in Baghdad. "But don't worry—the church will supply armed men."

As I walked back to my office after another Canon White chapel, I began to think about risk-takers and how important they are to the vitality of the church, or any organization: a ministry, a college, perhaps any gathering that desires to have vision. We need risk-takers. Sometimes they're called prophets. Andrew White is both a risk-taker and a prophet. And like most biblical prophets, he lives large—and dangerously. He is quite happy to speak boldly and forthrightly about what he believes. He is not a cautious man.

It seems most organizations have a variety of leaders who serve somewhere along a continuum between what I call "custodians" and "prophets."... the rest

However, when prophets and custodians work within the same organization, they have to figure out how to forge a constructive, helpful relationship. Leaders who eventually become presidents, CEOs, editors, and lead pastors assume a role of preserving the legacy of the institution they serve. They are now in management. They understand the cost of upsetting the constituency (or the congregation). They know how much easier it is to lead without prophets distracting them. And they are often constitutionally cautious and careful. It's not that they dislike change; they just change things slowly.

Prophets, on the other hand, push. They make proclamations. And quite often they are right. But quite often the vessel they sail in cannot handle how they'd like the boat to change course. Custodians need to avoid silencing their prophets. Prophets need to keep from subverting their custodians.

Niger arrests 14 suspected Boko Haram after troop ambush

Tue May 6, 2014

Fourteen suspected members of the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram were arrested in neighboring Niger on Tuesday after an attack on an army patrol in the eastern region of Diffa, the regional governor said.

Diffa, some 1,400 km east of Niger's capital, Niamey, borders the Nigerian state of Borno, the center of Boko Haram's uprising. Tens of thousands of refugees have fled the fighting to the arid region, and local Niger officials have repeatedly voiced concerns over Boko Haram infiltration.

Yacouba Soumana Gaoh, the regional governor of Diffa, said the army had detained two Boko Haram suspects who had robbed a man at gunpoint early on Tuesday in the commune of Chetimari. the rest

American Anglicans Show Solidarity with Persecuted Nigerian Christians

by Faith McDonnell
May 6, 2014

A resolution expressing support for Christians in Nigeria, under siege by the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, passed unanimously at the Annual Synod of the Missionary Diocese of CANA East on Saturday, May 3, 2014, in Wayne, PA. The Synod was the second annual gathering of the diocese, one of four missionary dioceses in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) led by Missionary Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Julian M. Dobbs.

Thousands of Nigerian Christians, including Anglicans, have been killed or injured by Boko Haram, which was finally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department last November. The radical Islamist group seeks the eradication of Christians and the total Islamization of Nigeria.

Boko Haram’s latest and possibly most despicable action was to abduct (new estimation) 276 school girls, mostly Christians, from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, northeast Nigeria, on April 14. Reports indicate that the militants are selling these teenage girls and otherwise enslaving them. The abductions followed a declaration by Boko Haram leader, Abubaker Shekau, made just weeks before that “in Islam, it is allowed to take infidel women as slaves and in due course we will start taking women away and sell in the market.” Prayer at the CANA East Synod focused on this tragic event.

This resolution showing solidarity with persecuted Nigerian Christians has a special poignancy because the Diocese of CANA East is a missionary diocese of the Anglican Church of Nigeria and many of its members are Nigerian Americans. And for disenfranchised former members of the Episcopal Church in the United States, such shows of solidarity might be considered a demonstration of gratitude to the Church of Nigeria that offered them a home... the rest

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

As one of His redeemed ones...

As one of His redeemed ones, you are His delight, and all His desire is to you, with the longing of a love which is stronger than death, and which many waters cannot quench. His heart yearns after you, seeking your fellowship and your love. Were it needed, He could die again to possess you... His life is bound up in yours; you are to Him inexpressibly more indispensable and precious than you ever can know. ...Andrew Murray image

Militants from the Islamic terror group Boko Haram have made good on their leader's chilling threat, kidnapping eight more girls from a Nigerian village late Monday, authorities said.

The abductions came hours after Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was seen on a widely-circulated video vowing to continue kidnapping the daughters of Christians, forcing them to convert to Islam and selling them into slavery. The kidnappings brought to more than 300 the number of girls who have been taken, according to Nigerian police.

Police said the girls, reportedly ranging in age from 12 to 15, were taken on trucks, along with livestock and food from the village of Warabe, in the nation's northeast.

"They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army color. They started shooting in our village,'' Lazarus Musa, of Warabe, told Reuters. the rest

The uncle had raped another girl in the village, according to tribal elders. Following tribal custom prevalent in highly conservative parts of Pakistan, the elders gave Amna and her 17-year-old cousin, Zulhaj, to that girl's family. Nobody asked their opinion.

Such "compensation marriages" are technically illegal under Pakistani law. But in a country with fraying central authority, the formal judicial system with its slow, corrupt course is often abandoned in favor of traditional tribal justice...

"I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby. I can make a life." -then films her abortion

May 6, 2014
By Kathy Schiffer

Emily Letts is a patient advocate (or more accurately, an abortion counselor). The 25-year-old works at Cherry Hill Women’s Centre in New Jersey, where she counsels women who are about to end the life of their children.

When Emily got pregnant, she made the same decision that she encourages other women to make: to cut short her baby’s life because she “wasn’t ready to be a mother.”

I’ve got news for you, Emily: You ARE a mother. You’re the mother of a dead baby.the rest

Letts made headlines this week in social media, in The Blaze, in the Huffington Post, by releasing a YouTube video of her own abortion, which she calls a “special memory.”

(The video is at the link, but there's no way I could watch the actual murder of a baby-PD)

Monday, May 05, 2014

Supreme court ruling favors prayer at council meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday that prayers that open town council meetings do not violate the Constitution even if they routinely stress Christianity.

The court said in 5-4 decision that the content of the prayers is not significant as long as officials make a good-faith effort at inclusion.

The ruling was a victory for the town of Greece, N.Y., outside of Rochester.

In 1983, the court upheld an opening prayer in the Nebraska legislature and said that prayer is part of the nation's fabric, not a violation of the First Amendment. Monday's ruling was consistent with the earlier one.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the prayers are ceremonial and in keeping with the nation's traditions. the rest

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," Shekau said, according to AFP.

Armed militants abducted more than 300 Nigerian girls from their secondary school in Borno state on April 14, driving them off into the remote Sambisa forest. While some managed to escape, police said last week that 276 were still missing...

‘I abducted your girls,’ Nigerian Islamist leader reportedly says in video
...Three weeks have now passed since dozens of heavily armed men descended upon a darkened dormitory where hundreds of Nigerian girls slept, abducted them and disappeared into the night. Three weeks since authorities erroneously stated that only 100 Chibok girls were missing — when in fact it was 276. And three weeks since hundreds of parents last saw their children, since they’ve launched protests that have swept a nation, since some of the girls were reportedly sold for $12 and vanished...

Gene Robinson to divorce his husband, Mark Andrew

03 May 2014
George Conger

The former Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt Rev. V. Gene Robinson, announced today that he is divorcing his spouse and partner of 25 years, Mark Andrew.

Writing in the Daily Beast on 3 Mary 2014, Bishop Robinson stated: “All of us sincerely intend, when we take our wedding vows, to live up to the ideal of ‘til death do us part.’ But not all of us are able to see it through.”

He stated that:

“Recently, my partner and husband of 25-plus years and I decided to get divorced. While the details of our situation will remain appropriately private, I am seeking to be as open and honest in the midst of this decision as I have been in other dramatic moments of my life—coming out in 1986, falling in love, and accepting the challenge of becoming Christendom’s first openly gay priest to be elected a Bishop in the historic succession of bishops stretching back to the apostles. “

Rumors of marital problems have dogged the bishop in recent years. At the 2012 General Convention in Indianapolis, Bishop Robinson took to the floor of the House of Bishops to denounce what he called “scurrilous” questions asked by reporter David Virtue about the health of his marriage. In a towering rage, Bishop Robinson denounced the journalist for violating his privacy and rejected the suggestions of marital difficulties. the rest

Thoughts on Bishop Gene Robinson’s divorce
...Within the progressive understanding, marriage ultimately becomes simply a contract which can be severed at will, and any holiness Robinson and those sharing his perspective might associate with either of his unions or their own is simply the conditional happiness of either or both parties involved. The problem in his understanding of what marriage is isn’t unique to his approach to the question of same-sex unions, but a far more profound one: Robinson sees any kind of marriage as simply a contractual understanding with no inherent sanctity, no inherent theological, ontological or salvific value.

Marriage for him involves no ontological change, nor does it serve, most importantly, as what two millennia of Christian teaching have constantly understood it to be: a transformative means to both husband and wife’s salvation together in an iconographical context, through which the man is called to love and sacrifice himself for his wife, and the woman is called to love and honor her husband. Missing completely from Robinson’s public articulations on what he understands marriage to be is any notion of either spouse incarnating between and among themselves the deepest bonds of love, affection, fidelity, and godly living.

Never mind that, iconographically and ontologically, two men or two women simply cannot replicate or embody the Church’s understanding of what a marriage is, even if we were to try to raise a homosexual union up, ontologically, and somehow imagine it mirroring a heterosexual marriage in a common striving toward godliness — Robinson’s own words make such an attempt to try to do this utterly impossible. Whether applied to heterosexual or homosexual unions, the understanding of marriage which Robinson puts forth fundamentally ignores the profound iconographical, scriptural and ontological significance which the universal Church Tradition accorded to marriage for two millennia. Thus, regardless of what one might think of Robinson or his position on marriage, what is beyond doubt is that his understanding of marriage is entirely outside the mind of the Church and the Scriptures as the Church has understood them for some 2,000 years...